Pop! Boom! Did that get your attention? I hope it not only got your attention but also made this article more fun. Pop and boom are examples of onomatopoeia. The use of onomatopoeia in your writing is a great way to engage readers, especially young readers. Onomatopoeia is the formation of a word that phonetically imitates the sound that it describes. More simply put, it’s a word or group of words that is also a sound or that imitates a sound. This sound is also usually the common sound of the object it’s describing. Other examples of onomatopoeia are beep, buzz, clink, crack, gurgle, honk, splash, squeak, zip and zoom, just to name a few. Onomatopoeia is a tool, like alliteration or rhyme that an author can use to make their work more interesting, appealing and lively. It is extremely useful in writing because it helps the writer to describe sounds more accurately. It may also be helpful for children learning to speak as onomatopoeia are usually among a child’s first words, such as animal sounds. Onomatopoeia also helps children learn to read. There are many reasons to use onomatopoeia and different ways to use it. Most of all, the use of onomatopoeia can make your writing more fun!

In my books, Moo, Moo, Chew, Chew: Sounds from the Farm and Roar, Roar, Growl, Growl: Sounds from the Jungle, I use onomatopoeia as the main ingredient of the book. The focus is the onomatopoeia itself, along with a little alliteration and rhyme. For example, in Moo, Moo, Chew, Chew, the text reads, “I hear oink, oink, oink and snort, snort, snort! Wallow, wallow, wallow and squeal, squeal, squeal! What is that?” With the next spread revealing that it’s a pig for little minds to discover. In this excerpt, oink, snort and squeal are three uses of onomatopoeia. Another example from Roar, Roar, Growl, Growl reads, “I hear croak, croak, croak and grunt, grunt, grunt! Ribbit, ribbit, ribbit with a hop, hop, hop! What is that?” With the next page once again being the reveal that it’s a frog. In this case, croak, grunt and ribbit are all examples. In both of these excerpts, the sounds the animals are making are used as onomatopoeia and their movements are added to give extra clues. In my other books, Honk, Honk, Vroom, Vroom: Sounds from the City, Rumble, Rumble, Grumble, Grumble: Sounds from the Sky, Toot, Toot, Hoot, Hoot: Sounds from the Symphony, and Ring, Ring, Click, Clack: Sounds from School, onomatopoeia continues to be the main ingredient but with fewer animal sounds. Groan, crunch, screech, ring, cha-ching, whistle, splat, crash, whirl, hiss, peck, squeak, and crackle are all examples of onomatopoeia from these books.

It is also very popular to use onomatopoeia in comic books and graphic novels. You might see words like pow, bang, whiz and kaboom all with exclamation points after them. These words allow the writer to convey not only sounds but also action. This makes the work more attention grabbing and captivating. Another way to use onomatopoeia is in the narrative to make the story more interesting and lively. For example, instead of writing, “When the boy returned, the puppy joyfully wagged his tail,” you could write, “When the boy returned, the puppy joyfully wagged his tail with a swish, swish, swish.” In this example, the onomatopoeia is used as describing the sound of an action and not only makes the passage more descriptive but it makes it more fun. Making your writing more descriptive and more fun are both important. It is important to make the writing as fun as possible to keep the reader’s attention. Being descriptive is important for young minds because they are using these descriptions along with their imagination and the illustrations to make sense of the book. Beyond that, they are using books and the words in them to make sense of the world around them that they are newly discovering. Onomatopoeia gives them more clues in this discovery and gives them an advantage on this journey. The use of onomatopoeia adds many positive features to a manuscript and overall can make your writing stand out from the crowd.